Pirelli announce tyre compounds for the next three races

Pirelli has announced the tyre compound allocations for the next three rounds of the Formula One 2013 season alongside making changes to the production process of the tyre.

The Italian firm have changed the “tyre production process” rather than the structure of the tyre itself (which remains unchanged) to increase and better the safety of the tyre after previous delamination issues.

The tyres from the new production process will debut at the British Grand Prix. They have scrapped prior plans to make more dramatic changes due to lack of running on the Friday of the Canadian Grand Prix and because “teams failed to agree unanimously about introducing the changes.”

They will bring the orange-banded hard tyre and the white-banded medium compound tyre to the British Grand Prix at the end of this month which will be “best suited to the high-energy demands of the Silverstone track.”

The medium compound will return for the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring but this time as the hardest of the two compounds, the yellow-banded soft tyre also being brought. Explaining their choice, Pirelli said: “The Nürburgring is a circuit with varied speeds and corners, plus heavy braking areas. The tarmac roughness is very low, so plenty of mechanical grip from the tyres is required. Combined with the often very variable weather conditions, this makes the soft and medium compounds the best choice for the iconic German track.”

The hard and medium compounds will be brought for Hungary like the British Grand Prix. Despite it being one of the slowest circuit’s on the calendar, it still “places a lot of demands on the tyres” due to its tricky and twisting layout. This means that the tyres “move around much more than on a fast and flowing track” and combined with the high ambient temperatures make the two compounds named the best option.

As always, each driver will receive six sets of the harder compound and five sets of the soft along with four and three sets of intermediates and wet tyres respectively.

Jack Leslie is a freelance motorsport journalist. He has been part of the Richland F1 team since the very start and made his debut in the F1 paddock for the website at the 2014 Austrian Grand Prix. Jack also writes for Car Throttle and RumbleStripNews, as well as running a popular blog.